Understand the Math Underlying Some of Your Favorite Gambling Games Basic Gambling Mathematics: The Numbers Behind the Neon explains the mathematics involved in analyzing games of chance, including casino games, horse racing, and lotteries. The book helps readers understand the mathematical reasons why some gambling games are better for the player than others. It is also suitable as a textbook for an introductory course on probability. Along with discussing the mathematics of well-known casino games, the author examines game variations that have been proposed or used in actual casinos. Numerous examples illustrate the mathematical ideas in a range of casino games while end-of-chapter exercises go beyond routine calculations to give readers hands-on experience with casino-related computations. The book begins with a brief historical introduction and mathematical preliminaries before developing the essential results and applications of elementary probability, including the important idea of mathematical expectation. The author then addresses probability questions arising from a variety of games, including roulette, craps, baccarat, blackjack, Caribbean stud poker, Royal Roulette, and sic bo. The final chapter explores the mathematics behind "get rich quick" schemes, such as the martingale and the Iron Cross, and shows how simple mathematics uncovers the flaws in these systems.
Category: Mathematics

Mathematics of Keno and Lotteries is an elementary treatment of the mathematics, primarily probability and simple combinatorics, involved in lotteries and keno. Keno has a long history as a high-advantage, high-payoff casino game, and state lottery games such as Powerball are mathematically similar. MKL also considers such lottery games as passive tickets, daily number drawings, and specialized games offered around the world. In addition, there is a section on financial mathematics that explains the connection between lump-sum lottery prizes (as with Powerball) and their multi-year annuity options. So-called "winning systems" for keno and lotteries are examined mathematically and their flaws identified.
Category: Mathematics

Over the past two decades, gamblers have begun taking mathematics into account more seriously than ever before. While probability theory is the only rigorous theory modeling the uncertainty, even though in idealized conditions, numerical probabilities are viewed not only as mere mathematical information, but also as a decision-making criterion, especially in gambling. This book presents the mathematics underlying the major games of chance and provides a precise account of the odds associated with all gaming events. It begins by explaining in simple terms the meaning of the concept of probability for the layman and goes on to become an enlightening journey through the mathematics of chance, randomness and risk. It then continues with the basics of discrete probability (definitions, properties, theorems and calculus formulas), combinatorics and counting arguments for those interested in the supporting mathematics. These mathematic sections may be skipped by readers who do not have a minimal background in mathematics; these readers can skip directly to the Guide to Numerical Results to pick the odds and recommendations they need for the desired gaming situation. Doing so is possible due to the organization of that chapter, in which the results are listed at the end of each section, mostly in the form of tables. The chapter titled The Mathematics of Games of Chance presents these games not only as a good application field for probability theory, but also in terms of human actions where probability-based strategies can be tried to achieve favorable results. Through suggestive examples, the reader can see what are the experiments, events and probability fields in games of chance and how probability calculus works there. The main portion of this work is a collection of probability results for each type of game. Each game s section is packed with formulas and tables. Each section also contains a description of the game, a classification of the gaming events and the applicable probability calculations. The primary goal of this work is to allow the reader to quickly find the odds for a specific gaming situation, in order to improve his or her betting/gaming decisions. Every type of gaming event is tabulated in a logical, consistent and comprehensive manner. The complete methodology and complete or partial calculations are shown to teach players how to calculate probability for any situation, for every stage of the game for any game. Here, readers can find the real odds, returned by precise mathematical formulas and not by partial simulations that most software uses. Collections of odds are presented, as well as strategic recommendations based on those odds, where necessary, for each type of gaming situation. The book contains much new and original material that has not been published previously and provides great coverage of probabilities for the following games of chance: Dice, Slots, Roulette, Baccarat, Blackjack, Texas Hold em Poker, Lottery and Sport Bets. Most of games of chance are predisposed to probability-based decisions. This is why the approach is not an exclusively statistical one (like many other titles published on this subject), but analytical: every gaming event is taken as an individual applied probability problem to solve. A special chapter defines the probability-based strategy and mathematically shows why such strategy is theoretically optimal."
Category: Games

With an emphasis on mathematical thinking and problem solving, Mathematics in Games, Sports, and Gambling — The Games People Play shows how discrete probability, statistics, and elementary discrete mathematics are used in games, sports, and gambling situations. It draws on numerous examples, questions, and problems to explain the application of mathematical theory to various real-life games. Only requiring high school algebra, the text offers flexibility in choosing what material to cover in a basic mathematics course. It covers permutations in the two-deck matching game so derangements can be counted, introduces graphs to find matches when looking at extensions of the five-card trick, and studies lexicographic orderings and ideas of encoding for card tricks. The text also explores linear equations and weighted equations in the section on the NFL passer rating formula and presents graphing to show how data can be compared or displayed. For each topic, the author includes exercises based on real games and sports data.
Category: Mathematics

Lucid, instructive, and full of surprises, this book examines how simple mathematical analysis can throw unexpected light on games of every type, from poker to golf to the Rubik's cube. 1989 edition.
Category: Mathematics

Urban gambling, linked to poverty, crime and corruption, was once considered a blight on US cities. Gambling then followed the exodus of Americans into the suburbs after World War II and now, at the beginning of the 21st century, most Americans live within a four-hour drive of a casino. What explains the success of places like Las Vegas? The self-contained casino resort removes gambling and its social problems from cities and provides Americans with the comfort of gambling in a setting matched to their suburban lifestyle. In a detailed look at the growth of the earliest casino resorts to the "pleasure palaces" and riverboat casinos of today, "Suburban Xanadu" locates the rise of the casino resort in suburbanization and the significance of this development for today.
Category: Games

Introduction to Probability with Texas Hold’em Examples illustrates both standard and advanced probability topics using the popular poker game of Texas Hold’em, rather than the typical balls in urns. The author uses students’ natural interest in poker to teach important concepts in probability. This classroom-tested book covers the main subjects of a standard undergraduate probability course, including basic probability rules, standard models for describing collections of data, and the laws of large numbers. It also discusses several more advanced topics, such as the ballot theorem, the arcsine law, and random walks, as well as some specialized poker issues, such as the quantification of luck and skill in Texas Hold’em. Homework problems are provided at the end of each chapter. The author includes examples of actual hands of Texas Hold’em from the World Series of Poker and other major tournaments and televised games. He also explains how to use R to simulate Texas Hold’em tournaments for student projects. R functions for running the tournaments are freely available from CRAN (in a package called holdem). See Professor Schoenberg discuss the book.
Category: Mathematics

Recounts the story of how a notorious gang of MIT blackjack savants devised and received backing for a system for winning at the world's most sophisticated casinos, an endeavor that earned them more than three million dollars. Originally published as Bringing Down the House. Reissue. (A Columbia Pictures film, written by Peter Steinfeld & Allan Loeb, directed by Robert Luketic, releasing March 2008, starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne, Jim Sturgess, & others) (Current Affairs)
Category: Biography & Autobiography

A former Wall Street trader tells the story of his foray into sports betting and how he applied his risk-analyis skills to baseball statistics to achieve a forty one percent return in 2011.
Category: Biography & Autobiography

As part of the notorious MIT Team depicted in Ben Mezrich's now classic Bringing Down the House, Jeff Ma used math and statistics to master the game of blackjack and reap handsome rewards at casinos. Years later, Ma has inspired not only a bestselling novel and hit movie, but has also started three different companies—the latest of which, Citizen Sports, is an innovative marriage of sports, betting, and digital technology—and launched a successful corporate speaking career. The House Advantage reveals Ma's cutting-edge mathematical insights into the world of statistics and makes them applicable to a wide business audience. He argues that numbers are the key to analyzing nearly everything in the world of business, from how to spot and profit from global market inefficiencies to having multiple backup plans in anticipation of every probability. Ma's stories and business lessons are as intriguing as they are universally applicable.
Category: Business & Economics